Medical Spa Marketing Guide to SEO

7 min readMar 2, 2019

Ultimate SEO Guide for Medical Practices & Spas

SEO for Doctors or Medical Practices can be tough. You know your competition and you also know that more and more advertisements are taking up space on the first page(s) in search results, making ranking on Page 1 increasingly more challenging.

While it’s tough, the fact of the matter remains that you can still stand out and rank on page 1 of search results for local searches if you follow the guidelines outlined in our Ultimate SEO Guide for Medical Practices & Spas.

Before we dive into the technicalities of Dominating in Local Search Results, we want to give you a few reasons why you should make it a priority for your spa or practice to be found on page 1…

How can Local Search Rankings Positively Impact my Medical Practice?

Local Search Rankings, or the order in which search engines display results for local searches can dramatically increase your book of business over time.

Some key advantages to optimizing your medical practice or spa website for Local Search Results is that in doing so you enable your practice to:

Be found on the First Page by Potential Clients or New Patients
Book More Consultations & Appointments
Be Seen as the Subject Matter Expert
Grow!

Follow our step by step guide to ensure that your medical practice ranks higher than your competitors in local search results!

The Step by Step Ultimate SEO Guide for Medical Practices

#1 Everything Starts with Your Website!

In order for your medical practice to be shown in search results, you would first have to have a Website. A search engine is just a fancy name for an indexing tool, without a website you won’t have anything to index and display in search results!

Get in touch if you need a website or are thinking about giving your site a facelift.

Your Medical Practice website needs to have some key details in place in order for you to perform well in local searchers. You’ll want your website to have your name, your address, and phone number on your Contact page as well as the footers of every page. This will not only communicate to Google the address of your business but also make it much easier for your website visitors to get in touch with you.

Your website should clearly define and categorize your services and have a dedicated page for each individual service or procedure.

Here is an example. Imagine you own a Facial Plastic Surgery practice that’s heavily focused on Nose Procedures. Here is how you would categorize your website structure & your website pages.

Home Page –> Service Categories

Service Category 1 → Sub Categories

Service Category 2 → Sub Categories

etc. below are visual examples of this in action

Here is a Drop Down Example of Each Category that’s Visible on the Home Page of the Example Website Above

The idea is to have great content on each one of the pages that trigger KeyWords for any given Surgical Procedure + City Name while also providing the best possible User Experience to each website visitor.

Check out this Resource If you are curious about Conversion Optimization (improving the rate at which your website converts)

#2 Have Your Patient/Client Reviews Easily Visible on Your Website

Google Loves Reviews, but so do your prospects. Reviews give your website visitors a glimpse into what they can expect when choosing your medical practice.

Reviews and Testimonials can be a big deciding factor for your visitors who aren’t sure or just haven’t fully committed to trusting your practice. Make sure that your reviews are authentic and when possible use before and after images.

BONUS TIP: Make a big push for Video Testimonials! One of the biggest trends today is the dramatic shift in engagement with Video Content. A video testimonial can have a HUGE Impact on your audience’s decision.

Here are a few reasons why Video Testimonials are making a HUGE Splash

A lot of practices have text reviews with generic stock “Before & After” photos, we see this a LOT with MedSpas especially ones that offer Coolsculpting (we love marketing Coolsculpting) By not using authentic before/afer photos you are only shooting yourself in the foot. Your website visitors have seen those same photos over and over again while researching, plus it just further communicates to your visitors that those “before/after” results are less common than they’re advertised since there aren’t that many organic photos floating around.

Instead, try Video testimonials. Videos are a great way to tell a moving story and ignite emotion, plus videos are much more personable and it’s much easier to build trust with your visitors with a Video Testimonial vs. a long text testimonial.

Another hidden advantage to video testimonials is that you can post the video on YouTube and optimize it for Search Engines AND you can also use the video to run a great advertisement campaign!

#3 Claim Your Google My Business Listing (and Get More Reviews)

To rank highly for local searches, you need to make sure that your practice is listed on Google My Business. In order to do so, you will probably need to create a new listing. In some cases, Google would have already done it for you. In those instances, you’ll need to claim, verify, and update all of your vital business details.

Once you’ve claimed your listing, you’ll need to verify that you are the owner of that listing. In order to do that, Google will send you a postcard with a PIN that you’ll enter into your Google My Business account to Verify that the Listing belongs to you. Most of the time it takes about 3 days for you to receive the postcard by mail. So keep an eye out.

P.S. the way Google knows that the Business belongs to you is by sending the PIN code to the address associated with the business!

#4 Get As Many (Reputable) Backlinks Pointing at Your Website as Possible

You probably already know that you’ll want to create a Facebook Page, an Instagram Page, a Yelp Page, and so on. Make sure that your contact information matches up anywhere you have your website listed.

There are hundreds of websites like WhitePages, CitySearch, LocalSearch, and so on where you can get your website listed for free. Let us know if you need any assistance.

PRO TIP: For Medical Practices it’s imperative that your website is listed on websites like vitals.com or healthgrades.com because you’re getting some serious link juice from domains that are highly relevant in your space. Keep in mind that you will also need to monitor and keep accurate records across every website listing where your doctors are registered. Unifying all information about your practice in every corner of the web will help your business stand out in search results!

#5 Develop KeyWord + Audience Focused Content Marketing Strategy

This is probably the most difficult part for many practices. Content Marketing & Local Search Marketing and identifying what KeyWords are winners and which ones are losers.

If you want to start testing today, you’ll want to make sure that every page on your website is targeting relevant KeyWords. These KeyWords should be a range of KeyWords, KeyWord Phrases, and Long Tail KeyWords.

The easiest ones to rank for are Longtail KeyWords because these KeyWords are triggered by more specific searches. While the KeyWords are easier to rank for, it’s often hard for inexperienced Marketing managers to identify the right set of KeyWords to run Google Ads for and the right set of KeyWords to run SEO campaigns for. In the end, Longtail KeyWords are more specific and convert at a much higher rate than the generic KeyWords. Longer the search phrase, the higher the intent!

Here is an example of how a KeyWord Phrase compares to a LongTail KeyWord in search results…

KeyWord Phrase: Let’s say you’re targeting the KeyWord phrase “plastic surgeons in Miami”. If you search “plastic surgeons in Miami”, you’ll see lots of advertisements and competition. Even in organic search results, you’ll probably see Doctor Ranking sites (websites that make doctors pay to be featured and “ranked” Top 10 in the area)…so obviously this particular KeyWord phrase is a little difficult to rank for. You’ll be competing against “ranking” and “listing” sites, a lot of ads, and deca-million dollar practices who spend millions on online marketing each year.

Longtail KeyWords: In contrast, if you were to be more specific and wanted to target some Longtail KeyWords such as “Plastic Surgeons in Miami specializing in Earlobe Repair” you’ll have FAR less competition because the volume for searches like this one is a lot lower. However, Longtail KeyWords convert at a significantly higher rate, they’re more specific and more intentional.

Another Helpful Article: 7 Must Use Google Marketing Tools for Your Medical Practice

If your Practice is ready to grow, we’d love to replicate what’s already working for our clients and get your practice dominating local search results!